A Trip UP the Jumpoff.

One of the most intimidating spots in the Smokies is near the top of Mount Kephart, where the Appalachian Trail and the Boulevard intersect. Near this junction there’s a side trail that leads about half a mile, past the actual summit of Mount Kephart, to the eastern edge of this mountain. Yes, the eastern edge. When speaking of the Smoky Mountains, the word “edge” probably seems out of place. There aren’t a lot of edges in the Smokies because the southern Appalachians tend to have an old, rounded look to them. It seems that all the sharp edges have been worn off, and that’s mostly true for most of the park, but there are sections of the park where that is definitely, dramatically, unequivocally not true. One region of sharp edges is the bowl formed by Mount LeConte, The Boulevard, and the AT to Charlies Bunion and the Sawteeth. These sharp edges were all formed by some sort of erosion, sometimes gradual but often sudden landslides caused by a heavy rain. Occasionally human abuse (such as 1920s logging followed by forest fires) contributed to the landslides, but ultimately the underlying culprit is the fragile slate that provides a weak base for the accumulation of soil on these slopes.

Right in the middle of this bowl stands Mount Kephart with its steep eastern edge, the top of which is called The Jumpoff. I suppose I could spend a paragraph expounding on the meaning of that name, but it’s probably pretty obvious: it’s high and steep.

Of course, many places in this LeConte-Boulevard-Bunion bowl could be called the Jumpoff, but the name was apparently attached to this particular location by the Smoky Mountains Hiking Club. One of the most obscure, but interesting, Smokies-related documents I’ve ever encountered is the script of a skit that was put on by several members of the SMHC in 1944 celebrating and reminiscing about their first twenty years of existence. These old, yellowed papers were passed down from Dutch Roth (one of the SMHC’s first members) to his daughter, Margaret Ann, and to her brother’s son, Charlie Roth, who is one of my regular hiking buddies. In one scene of the skit, one of the actors (probably Guy Frizzell) commented:

Did you know the Hiking Club had a part in naming a lot of places on the state line and the Tennessee side of the Smokies? Yeah, four of our members and Hodge Mathis of Johnson City were designated as an advisory committee to the U.S. Geographic Board of Names. Jim Thompson was chairman and Brockway Crouch, Robert L. Mason, and Paul Fink were the other members. They collected folk lore, old maps, talked with the old-timers of the mountains – I remember Andy Gregory was a big help – and then they recommended the adoption of names most generally accepted; but in many instances there were duplications to be avoided. There were Big Creeks, Mill Creeks and Fork Ridges everywhere. Well, this gave the Committee an opportunity to slip in some real old Hiking Club lingo, such as “Wooly Tops,” “Boulevard,” “Charlie’s Bunion,” and “The Jump-Off.”

Yes, Jumpoff was the name that the SMHC used among themselves to describe this high, eastern edge of Mount Kephart.

My three hiking partners and I have had the experience of hiking in some out-of-the-way places – ridges, creeks, and cascades that have no names. For awhile we have to stumble around whenever we talk about them, saying things like, “the path that starts at Tremont and goes to Thunderhead” or “the big cascade a half mile above Ramsey Cascades,” but we eventually settle in to using names that emerge naturally out of the conversations, without forming a committee and taking a vote. So, the old path from Tremont becomes Thunderhead Prong Trail, the cascade above Ramsey Cascades becomes Upper Ramsey, the rocky overlook a quarter mile east of Charlies Bunion becomes the Rocky Crag, and the three tributaries feeding Lester Prong above Porters Creek become First Trib, Second Trib, and Third Trib, starting low and moving upstream because that’s the direction we normally travel when we explore the Lester Prong watershed.

Little cliques of hikers have been giving their own names to their personal stomping grounds for years. For example, I’ve heard some folks speak of the Real Charlies Bunion, the Tourist Charlies Bunion, the Boobs, and No Name Ridge – all names that have no meaning outside the insiders of those groups. Because this process of naming happens so naturally, I’d bet the farm that this same thing has been going on since the beginning of time. Ancient hunter-gatherer tribes undoubtedly encountered rivers and waterfalls and gave them their own, common-sense names. If a tribe’s first encounter with a watering hole resulted in killing a panther, then that watering hole might forever be Dead Panther Spring. On the other hand, if the panther got the better end of the deal, it might henceforth be known as Dead Hunter Spring. Either way, the names evolve out of common use based on real life (Panther Springs, Mill Creek) with an occasional flourish of creativity (Jumpoff) or humor (Charlies Bunion).

Giving permanent, official names to rivers and mountains is a relatively new phenomenon in American history which began only as outsiders in the form of explorers, scientists, and government officials encountered these remote places. These ambassadors of civilization had to standardize the names so they would know which rivers and ridges they were talking about amongst themselves for the purposes of navigation, boundaries, and ownership. You can’t make a good map of your domain without names for the places you are mapping. In the Smokies, this process didn’t happen until the 1930s as the old pioneer names were replaced by a different, official set of titles, and apparently only those groups of hikers or hunters who are appointed as advisory committees to governmental boards will ever have the chance to emblazon their place names on an official map.

So “Jumpoff” provides a vivid description of this sheer, eastern face of Mount Kephart. It’s an appropriate name, but keep in mind that “jump off” is a colorful description, not a suggestion – a noun, not a verb.

The view from the Jumpoff is dramatic and unique. For those who think of the Smokies as a land of smooth, green mountains… okay, you are about 95% correct. But to see some of that other 5%, go to the Jumpoff and look east toward Charlies Bunion and the Sawteeth, into the area that could easily be called the Land of Sharp Edges. Of course, the rocky outcrop of Charlies Bunion is a centerpiece of this section, but the ridge leading up to it as well as the parallel ridges beyond it are battered and scarred. While this is a great view in any season, a summer view will be the most visually distinctive, allowing you to see the contrasts of green foliage versus the brown-gray, rocky scars.

From the other side of the Land of Sharp Edges, just beyond Charlies Bunion, looking back at Mount Kephart is equally impressive. How long has Mount Kephart looked like this, like a deformed giant? Since birth? Or has its entire eastern side been scooped off and deposited downstream in more recent millennia? Walking up the watershed where the debris would have to flow, there are many tangled trees and boulders from recent landslides, but there’s not half a mountain in these creeks. Whether it was a sudden catastrophe or a long, slow process, visualizing the huge piece that is missing from this mountain is mind-boggling.

While the view from the Jumpoff to the ridges of the east is best during the summer, the view from those ridges west toward the Jumpoff is best after a light dusting of snow or ice. This whitens the moss and shrubs that cover the upper half of the Jumpoff and gives it a Yosemite look, like a wall of bare granite. This is the perspective that shows how truly rugged Kephart’s eastern face really is.

* * * * *

While my three hiking partners and I had been talking for months about exploring Lester Prong all the way to the base of the Jumpoff, Greg Harrell was the first to actually do it. Of the four of us, he’s the one most likely to hike off-trail by himself. He may even prefer to go by himself; although, he hasn’t come right out and said so, probably because none of us have come right out and asked. It’s just generally understood among us that on any given Sunday, Greg may show up at church with tales of a Saturday hike that took him to some place that none of us had yet explored. He has topo maps at home with mysterious blue lines that he’s drawn up and down and across and along dozens of obscure creeks and ridges. It’s his three dimensional, Smokies “to do” list. To keep him from doing all these new trips without us, we’ve had to pressure him into solemn pacts with us – promises that none of us will explore Eagle Rocks or the Cat Stairs or some unnamed ridge until all of us are able to go. But we don’t have a pact for every blue line, so he takes off without us every now and then.

Greg seems to have a special “death wish” gene that the rest of us don’t have. The fact that he visited the Jumpoff by himself suggests the presence of this genetic defect. The fact that he went in February confirms it. Now we’ve all done February hikes before, and they are usually uncomfortably fabulous. You just have to put yourself in the right frame of mind by embracing the cold weather as a point of pride rather than discomfort. However, the thing that puts Greg’s initial Jumpoff trip in a special category is that much of it involves a wet, river hike – and by “wet” I mean hiking in the river. Not near the river. Not by the river. In the river, ankle to knee to waist deep. Yep, there’s definitely a genetic defect lurking under the surface. If it weren’t such dangerously bizarre behavior, he’d have our respect for such foolishness.

Like most of his hikes, the description of this one begins like this: “Park at Porters Creek ….” Greg seems to enjoy the fact that you have to hike almost four miles to the end of Porters Creek Trail before the real adventure begins. From the end of this trail there’s an old path that leads even further along Porters Creek, crossing it several times, and eventually crossing Lester Prong which flows into Porters from the southwest.

Actually, there are a couple of old paths, and the one that parallels and crosses Porters Creek is the less visible of the two. In August, 2009, a 70 year old, experienced hiker parked at the Porters Creek trailhead, hiked the four miles on Porters Creek trail and intended to continue on this old path along Porters Creek. Somehow he managed to lose this path and instead of working his way up Porters Creek, he ended up lost and on the top of Porters Mountain, where he camped for several days until the search and rescue team found him.

My partners and I have been up this route many times. In fact, it was one of the first off-trail trips that we discovered in the Smokies. While I don’t know exactly how the hiker got off track and lost, I can visualize several spots where it could have happened. The most likely is at the end of the official trail, by the Porters Flats backcountry campsite, also known as Campsite #31. At this spot, the old path continues to the left, but within about a minute there’s a barely-visible split. At this split, the less-obvious, less-visible path to the right leads along the creek. The more-obvious, more-visible path bears to the left and heads up the western slope of Porters Mountain. After sending you up this slope, this trail quietly, calmly disappears. If you continue upslope, hoping to rediscover the trail, you’ll end up in the rhododendron thickets and rocky ridge of Porters Mountain. Without a good map and compass, at this point you’ll probably be lost. On the other hand, if you can figure out where you are, you can push your way along the ridgecrest to Porters Gap on the Appalachian Trail. I’ve done that trip once. I don’t intend to do it again. We weren’t lost, but it was really hard. It took over a week for my cuts and bruises to heal.

Of course, today we’d be avoiding Porters Mountain. We’d follow Porters Creek along the old, barely-visible path. Staying on this old path will lead you up the rough, slippery creekbed of Porters Creek to the Appalachian Trail on the main ridgecrest, near Dry Sluice Gap. But things get even rougher and more interesting if you hop off this path and slosh your way up Lester Prong because Lester Prong leads eventually to the Jumpoff.

So six months after Greg’s initial trip, when temperatures were at a more civilized level, all four of us (Greg, Keith Oakes, Charlie Roth, and I) did the Lester Prong-Jumpoff trip. While the name Jumpoff has some glamour, the name Lester Prong doesn’t. It sounds tame, even to the point of being a bit dorky. I don’t want to offend anyone out there who’s named Lester, but there’s a reason why wrestlers and other celebrities name themselves Rock, Diesel, Bono, Sting, even Ray or Jon, but never Lester. (To avoid the appearance of conceit, let me hasten to say that I fully understand that they don’t name themselves Greg, either.) It’s just not a name that conjures up images of bravery and excitement. But Lester Prong is anything but tame. Yes, it’s small – it would be nearly impossible to drown in it – but it wouldn’t be hard to fall to your death. If I had been on that advisory committee, I’d have suggested Deathwish Prong, only because Styx Branch (you know, the river that flows through Greek hell) was already taken by a creek on the other side of Mount LeConte.

After hiking up Lester Prong for about half an hour, we began to see car, truck, and trailer sized tangles of debris – trees and rocks – in the creek. This is always a sign of a landslide, usually the result of a sudden, heavy rain that saturates the ground and pulls several acres of soil off the mountain side, bringing tons of rocks and trees with it. This conglomeration will ride its way downstream as a wall of mud, wood, rock, and water, eventually slogging to a halt and creating huge tangles in the river valley.

After a few hundred yards of these tangles, which got bigger as we moved further upstream, we came to a fork in the creek around 4,700’ elevation, about 1,300’ below the Jumpoff directly above us. The line of debris flowed from the right branch, showing that this most recent landslide had come from that direction, near Horseshoe Mountain to the north. The left branch had a long, thin, scoured look with only a few loose rocks and a modest stream of water running down the middle, meaning that if we were going to follow Lester Prong as far as possible, this was the fork we would take.

So we did.

But it wasn’t easy.

This was the point where our hike changed from a feet-only affair to feet -& hands because this left fork was slippery and steep. Later we calculated that the overall incline of this section was about 45 to 50 degrees, which doesn’t seem difficult on paper, but on the ground it’s tough because this 45 degree incline is an average. There would be ten or twenty feet of 60+ degree incline followed by a few feet of maybe 10 or 20 degrees, followed by another ten or twenty feet of steep, wet cascade, followed by a few feet of easy stepping. The result is mostly hands and feet climbing, with only a few brief reprieves. Did I mention the fact that water has been flowing over this bed of slate since time immemorial? So it tends to be a bit on the smooth, slippery side of things with very few sharp, strong hand and footholds. The result is that we spent much of our time a few yards to the side of the cascade, alternately pushing and pulling our way through a thick layer of green, wet, soft, loose moss, plus a lot of roots and branches.

In this kind of climbing, our most trusted allies are spruce trees. We can trust these trees and their roots with our lives; although we try not to put ourselves in that position very often. Whether climbing up a steep, rocky bluff or through a steep thicket of shrubs and trees, it’s best to keep your weight evenly distributed among your four points of contact – two hands and two feet – but occasionally it’s necessary to put all your weight on just one point. I will rarely do this on a rock surface but will resort to it upon occasion if I can use a root or branch – but only healthy spruce trees. They are always strong and sturdy, which is something I can’t say confidently about birch, rhododendron, mountain laurel, and the dozens of other bushes that grow on these steep slopes.

A close second is sand myrtle which is a small, leathery bush that often grows in the cracks of very acidic, rocky terrain, which is exactly what the ridges and cliffs of the Land of Sharp Edges consist of. We won’t put all our weight on a single sand myrtle the way we would a spruce root, but we can use a sand myrtle bush to pull ourselves up with as much or more confidence than we place in the rock itself, simply because the rock is fragile, Anakeesa slate that sometimes breaks off in your hand when you pull on it. The sand myrtle that grows in the cracks of these walls of slate really is more trustworthy than the rock it grows on.

Rhododendron is a distant third. Apparently its roots aren’t designed to dig deep into cracks in the rock, so these plants – which seem strong and rubbery at lower elevations – are often weak or dying on these high, rocky slopes. Only occasionally can they be trusted as a secure hand-hold. Mountain Laurel – rhododendron’s close cousin – is a bit too brittle and breaks too easily. So we tend to use the laurel and rhody to help us keep our balance when we need just a little extra help in leaning the right direction. It’s like holding on to a handrail as you go up a flight of stairs. You don’t need it to support your entire body weight; you only need it to provide a little support to help you keep your balance.

As we worked our way up, we spent more time in the moss and bushes than we spent in the creek because the creek was now a long, winding cascade which was too steep and slippery for us to trust. Only occasionally could we get in it and climb directly on its rocky path and even then only on segments that were ten or twenty feet high – if any higher, a slip and slide would be long and painful.

The result was a long, slow ascent as we grabbed and pulled and pushed and rested. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The next day, as I recuperated from our adventure, my legs and arms were a little sore, but the body part that suffered the most was my fingers. The muscles in my fingers were almost too sore for me to grip door knobs, write with a pen, and type on a keyboard. I’ve never seriously pondered the fact that there are muscles in our fingers, and to the best of my recollection I’ve never done any activity that actually made my finger muscles sore… until the grabbing and pulling of this trip. From now on I guess I’ll have to put finger exercises into my workout routine; although, I have no clue what kind of exercise to do to get a good finger workout; maybe kneading bread dough or digging in sand. Is there such a thing as finger curls? It’s a question that personal trainers probably aren’t asked very often because finger muscles aren’t glamour muscles. Rock climbers, on the other hand, would know the value of a buff hand.

This was the first trip on which I wore gloves. A couple of recent, off-trail trips had resulted in some damage to my hands and wrists. I normally get some bumps and bruises, but on one of these trips I had managed two good cuts on my hand and wrist. I don’t know how I got them. In fact, as I recall, Charlie and Keith asked where I got the bloody cuts, and I couldn’t tell them because I hadn’t noticed until they pointed them out. Although, I suppose I would have noticed sooner or later because one of them wouldn’t stop bleeding. As a result, I have some good pictures of me wearing a blood-stained shirt. It looks worse than it really is which is the way I like things to be – that is, not as bad as they seem. The cut on my wrist didn’t bleed a lot, even though it was deeper and longer. In fact, Keith called is a “laceration” which had a nice, manly ring to it, but again it sounded worse than it really was.

So, after that trip, I began wearing gloves on some of these off-trail jaunts. Some guys wear stout, sticky gloves like NFL receivers wear, but I opted for a $13 pair of leather work gloves from Wal-Mart, and in this case that seemed somehow appropriate. Not only were these gloves less expensive, but they had a simple “going to work” appearance that I kind of like because some of these hikes are a lot like work, even to the point of looking forward to quitting time when you can go home and take a shower. My hiking partners use headlamps on our night hikes and Charlie wears protective goggles on some of these trips, so between headlamps, goggles, and gloves we look like a gang of laborers heading down into the coal mines. All that’s missing are lunch pails and hard hats.

This cascade, which we now call the Jumpoff Cascade, went on and on and on. One hundred feet, two hundred feet, one football field. More climbing. Four hundred. Five hundred. Two football fields. More climbing. Seven hundred. During the climb we didn’t know exactly how long this cascade extended, but we made a pretty good guess based on elevation and angle. Greg, Keith, and Charlie all had altimeters which measure elevation using barometric pressure. Their equipment all pretty much agreed that after 1,000 feet of vertical elevation gain, we came to a split in the cascade. We had ascended vertically 1,000 feet at roughly a 45 degree angle, which would mean our horizontal distance was about 1,000 feet as well. Using the old Pythagorean Theorem from high school geometry class for calculating the hypotenuse of a right triangle, we came up with an estimate of about 1,400 feet. Up to this point, this cascade – which still continued up both of these small forks at this junction – was 1,400 feet long!

To grasp the significance of that, consider that Ramsey Cascades, one of the most popular waterfalls in the park, is about 100’ high. Abrams Falls, another visitor favorite, is about 30’ high. Yes, these two waterfalls have much greater volume and width than Jumpoff Cascade, which at this high elevation is generally just a heavy trickle… but 1,400 feet for cryin’ out loud! And it continues another one or two hundred feet up both of these upper forks on Mount Kephart.

It’s discoveries like this that make hiking in the backcountry really special. There are hidden, rarely-visited waterfalls and cascades all over the park: Mill Creek, Upper Ramsey, Cannon Creek, First Trib. They are everywhere, and in terms of sheer length, Jumpoff Cascade dwarfs them all.

It’s so long that just standing at the bottom and looking up its path gives you absolutely no idea of its real length. It twists and turns and just disappears after about 200 feet. So you can’t see it from the bottom. Later that day, as we stood atop the Jumpoff and looked down, we could see the general path of the creek as it zig-zagged down the slope, but there was too much distance and greenery to see the actual rock and water cascade. From above there’s no visible evidence that anything extraordinary is happening in the valley below – other than a wonderfully steep slope. And the Lester Prong valley is so remote that there’s no place to stand in the distance and hope to see this cascade. The only way to view it is to climb alongside it for several hours, from bottom to top, which only adds to its mystique. It’s unapproachable, unattainable… and, therefore, that much more alluring.

On the less-dramatic, more-delicate side, this slope surrounding the Jumpoff Cascade is covered in thick, wet moss with frequent outposts of Grass of Parnassus, a lovely, white wildflower that few visitors ever see. As my Wildflowers of the Smokies says, “Consider yourself very lucky to find this outstanding native of bogs and seepage slopes.” My hiking partners and I are not exactly wildflower enthusiasts, but we do like to know what’s going on around us, so we did indeed consider ourselves lucky to stumble across these small, white reminders that much of the wonder of the Smokies is at knee or ankle level.

The split in the creek at this “top” of the cascade is at 5,700 feet – about 300 vertical feet from the top of the Jumpoff. At this point we all split up, not out of design, but simply to follow our various interests. I decided to go up the left fork; although I can’t really explain why. This fork had the heavier flow of water, and it seemed that it would lead to the crease where the Boulevard meets the AT. (It didn’t.) Maybe I was hoping there would be a few gawking tourists at the top when I walked out of the woods. Greg, Keith, and Charlie followed the right fork which seemed to head straight up to the highest point of the Jumpoff, but certainly couldn’t go all the way to the top, simply because the last 100 feet or so would be a nearly-vertical climb. Even a guy with a death wish gene would have enough presence of mind to think about the people who love and depend on him to keep him from trying to climb that last vertical 100 feet.

So my three partners headed right, but they spread out a bit as well. There was a rocky scar that stopped their progress across the face of Mount Kephart, so they did some backtracking and re-routing to find a path that would lead them to the top. In short, they had the same troubles that I was having – rocky cliffs that would form a barrier that had to be avoided, usually by moving laterally along the base until a gap in the cliff would allow them to move upward. It’s a zig-zagging route that always holds that possibility of climbing for an hour or two, only to find yourself hemmed in by cliffs above and to both sides, meaning that the only option is to retreat and regroup.

There were several points in their climb that this seemed to be happening. Occasionally during the afternoon I was able to look across the slope only to hear and see patch of rustling bushes on a frighteningly steep slope, but they were usually able to find a crease or a gap or a ledge or some escape route that eventually led them to the top. Of course, this involved the same tactics that we had been using for the past two hours – push through the bushes, hang on to roots and limbs, crawl up moss-covered rock, rest, repeat.

While they were engaged in their struggle, I was working my way up the left fork in much the same manner. They had stayed with their part of the cascade for several more minutes before the slope became too steep and they had to move laterally. I also stayed with my fork of the creek, but it quickly became too steep and slippery for me to actually climb in the cascade, so I moved to the brush and thickets along the side. As I pulled myself up through the bushes and moss, my imagination began to run away with me. The slick cascade wouldn’t let me go further left. What if I came to a rocky cliff that wouldn’t let me go higher and another that wouldn’t let me go right? My only option would be to backtrack, but backtrack to where? The fork where we had separated? How long would that take? Where would my partners be? Would they have stumbled upon a route to the top that I might miss?

I didn’t exactly visualize my own death, but I did wonder how much a NPS search and rescue mission costs. I guess I’m just not cut out for off-trail hiking in unknown territory by myself. Greg Harrell has a death wish gene. Apparently I have a sissy gene. Although, in my defense, one of my fears did materialize. I found myself hemmed in by the cascade on my left and a rocky cliff above me and to my right. So I began to backtrack, not knowing exactly what I’d do if I came to a point that would allow me to move right again. I had climbed through that territory a few minutes earlier and had ended up stuck. What could I do differently? (My sissy gene was definitely exerting its control over me.)

It was then that I noticed that the other side of the cascade looked a bit more manageable, a smoother slope and maybe fewer rocky walls to maneuver around. So I worked my way down the edge of the cascade, clinging to spruce roots and sand myrtle when available but settling for other shrubs and moss when necessary, until I found a narrow ledge across the cascade. Stepping along this wet ledge wasn’t my preferred option, but I was down to Plan D or E by now, so I worked my way across the flowing water, making sure I always had two hands and two feet firmly planted on the rock. The slope here was only about 45 or 50 degrees, so it was manageable, the main drawbacks being that my ledge was about four inches wide and the rather lengthy slide that I’d have to endure if I slipped. That’s why this was Plan D or E, not A.

As I crossed the cascade, I wondered how Charlie, Keith, and Greg were faring. Earlier I had looked across the slope and seen one or two of them stuck in the shrubs of a nearly vertical slope. From where I sat I pitied them because there seemed to be no alternative for them other than backtracking downslope and trying again. At the end of the day, I was amazed when they told me that they had found their way across and up because from my vantage point it had seemed impossible. As Greg succinctly put it about some of his predicaments, “I was in a few spots that I didn’t want to be in.” He didn’t elaborate further. He didn’t have to. We all knew exactly what he meant. At this moment, as I crossed the cascade, I was in one of those spots.

As it happens, the other side of my cascade was not as smooth and easy as it had appeared, a “grass is greener on the other side” kind of thing, I suppose. The rock faces that I continued to encounter pushed me further and further away from the cascade and up the slope of the creek valley. I hated to lose contact with the cascade because I had visualized myself following it all the way to its source, but the ridge that I was ascending was too comforting to pass up. Although I had never been on this particular ridge before, it felt very familiar. It was steep but not dangerously so. It was heavily wooded so I knew there was enough soil to support the trees – another sign of manageable terrain. There would be less rock and more dirt than what I had been crawling on for several hours. Although I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, I knew there was an end of the tunnel up ahead.

This ridge was thick with trees, Mountain Laurel, briers, and other obstructions, but it was a pleasant relief from the cliffs and cascade. My sissy gene liked this route better, so I followed the one main rule of hiking up a ridge – when in doubt, go up. My partners and I had become well acquainted with this rule. It’s one that never fails, and it didn’t fail me this day. Later on, after we were all reunited at the top, Greg said that he spent a few minutes sitting among the bushes, wondering what to do next, when he heard me pushing and crashing along the ridge less than 100 yards away. He watched me make my way toward the top. Once again, being a guy of few words, he didn’t say whether this gave him comfort or more frustration at his plight.

Keith and Charlie had apparently crossed a rocky scar at a different place than Greg did which highlighted how much luck is a part of this process of picking your way around rocky scars and faces and through mountain laurel thickets. In this kind of terrain, you tend to hike in ten or twenty foot segments. You don’t usually have the luxury of looking far ahead and seeing the big picture. You just try to get from point A to point B, and point B is rarely more than a few yards away. Only after you arrive at point B can you begin to look for point C. Sometimes the route you take leads to the end of the tunnel, sometimes it runs you into another wall. It’s a lot like rolling dice. Sometime you get lucky and sometimes you don’t. Keith and Charlie managed to find a path of least resistance that evaded Greg. At one point he was in such tight quarters that he had to take his pack off and tie a rope to it so he could climb over a rocky spot and pull his pack up after him. I think that was one of those spots that he didn’t want to be in. If he has a sissy gene, it was probably causing him to wonder – like I had – if there really was a path to the top and how much a search and rescue mission costs, and who pays for it?.

About an hour after we had split up – yes, it took us about an hour to travel that final 300 feet – Keith and Charlie reached the top, a mere 100 feet from the northernmost overlook at the top of the Jumpoff. At about the same time, I pushed through the bushes at the top of my nameless ridge. As I stood on the trail at the top, it seemed too small to be the AT or the Boulevard. Could it actually be the thin trail that runs along the edge of the Jumpoff? After walking a minute or two, I passed the southernmost overlook of the Jumpoff. Somehow my ridge had topped out not on the AT as I had expected, but about 200 feet from the southern end of the Jumpoff.

I went to the middle of the Jumpoff and yelled for Greg, wondering where he was. His response came back to me immediately, because he was only about 50 feet below me. (Later, as we sat at Arbys eating our celebratory meal, Greg told me that at that moment, he was just sitting and wondering what to do next. To quote him: “It was good to hear your voice.” For Greg, that’s a warm and fuzzy moment.) We talked for just a moment – me above and Greg below but both hidden from each other by the shrubs – then I moved north along the Jumpoff and found Charlie and Keith sitting at the spot where they had topped out. About 15 minutes later Greg came up at their spot by aiming at their voices as they taunted him for being so slow. Because I’m the slow one in our group, this was one of those rare instances in which I arrived at our destination before he did. I should have taken advantage of the situation and joined in the taunting, but I was too tired to muster up any enthusiasm for the project, so I let Keith and Charlie do all the work.

We spent fifteen excellent minutes on the Jumpoff, basking in the view, the quiet, the cool breeze… and the sense of accomplishment. It was only at this moment that I realized how relieved I was to be finished. It wasn’t physical relief; it was mental. This trip’s stress level had been a bit higher than average, probably the result of risk mixed with angst about the unknown. I wouldn’t go so far as to say we were in serious danger, but for those last few hours we all understood that the consequences of a moment of clumsiness or carelessness could have been serious. We also understood that people had probably done this route before, but we didn’t know any of them, so we weren’t 100% assured that we could reach the top before the sun set. Running out of daylight is always a nagging concern when we are off-trail because there’s a very, very thin line between being off-trail in the dark and being lost, and I’m pretty sure that while you are doing it, they’d feel like the same thing.

Of course, the views, the 1,400’ cascade, the effort, and the angst all worked together to make this one of our most memorable Smokies trips. For a full month afterward, during quiet moments I‘d find my thoughts drifting to that eastern slope of Mount Kephart – everything from the rush of adrenaline to the delicacy of the Grass of Parnassus.

As I write this, we’ve all done this Lester-Jumpoff trip several more times, and I must admit, each time has been a challenge. I had expected that the drama of the unknown wouldn’t be quite as pronounced because we now knew that it is possible to get to the top, but that wasn’t quite the case. Yes, we now know it’s possible to reach the top, but finding that route isn’t a foregone conclusion. Even a slight deviation from a previous route can create a trajectory that puts you in a spot that you don’t want to be in, which is something that has happened to us every time we’ve made this trip.

Eventually, sanity prevailed and we decided that we should take a break from the Jumpoff. While we’d had no near-death experiences, we did begin to wonder aloud if perhaps we weren’t pushing our luck. How many times can a guy put his trust in sand myrtle bushes, worn slate, spruce roots, and globs of wet moss, and escape unharmed? We’d been rolling the dice and had continued to win, but eventually the laws of probability would catch up with us. So we quit while we were ahead.

But like any temptation – gambling or otherwise – a relapse isn’t completely out of the question, especially in late summer when the Grass of Parnassus is in bloom and the Jumpoff beckons.

Post Script: If you've read Jenny Bennett's (fiction) book Murder at the Jumpoff, this is the route where the body is found. Also, I think the guy who is murdered in her book is based on one of my hiking partners, who shall remain anonymous.

Another Post Script: Since you made it to the end of this story... thanks for reading. You might be interested to know that I have a couple of books published about hiking in the Smokies. My second book, Paths Less Traveled, is about off-trail hiking in the Smokies. A slightly revised version of this Jumpoff story is one of the chapters in that book. Both are available on Amazon.

Replies to This Vacation Tale

Oh yeah Greg this is one of the best trip reports I have ever read on this site! I was following along your route with my big 7.5 USGS topo on my wall here at work (while I should have been working lol). I will go with you up there anytime and I won't even blame you if I die since I will be dead ;)